Recent history has seen a proliferation of dogs being adopted as household pets. Pets provide many benefits to our lives; yet, every benefit has an associated duty. Duties associated with pets include caring for them, spending time with them, feeding them, walking them, and, of course, cleaning up after them.
The days of tying up the dog to a post and providing a doghouse in the back yard are over, which is seen, at the very least as socially unacceptable and at most inhumane treatment. Consequently, most pets live in the house with us and must be walked throughout the neighborhood for exercise.
As pets are no longer confined to the back yard, cleaning up after them has taken on a heightened sense of duty. Laws, and the enforcement of them, have become strict regarding cleaning up after pets. This requires having something portable to bring with us during walks that can be used to collect pet waste and transport it back to the home.
Pet waste collectors do exist, but they tend to be heavy and unwieldy. Furthermore, the use of them requires one to clean the fecal matter from the apparatus after use. For this reason pet owners tend to opt for plastic bags as a source of waste collection. The use of bags, however, requires one to kneel down close to the waste, use one's hand as the means to entrain the waste, and carry the entrained waste within the bag back to the home.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a means by which the functionality of a pet waste collector and the ease and convenience of a waste bag can be exploited in one device.